Last Wednesday, South Belfast’s Boucher Road looked like a scene from the worst days of the Troubles. Aerial fire appliances pumped water over Reid’s furniture store and Homebase DIY, inside which gas canisters were exploding in the heat. The job of the 70 fire-fighters at the scene was all but impossible.

Police were warning that further firebomb attacks on stores in Belfast could not be ruled out. In a morning briefing at PSNI headquarters, chief constable Sir Hugh Orde was told that this series of attacks was not the major terrorist assault his C3 intelligence section had been predicting for months. That was still to come.

Efforts are now being made by the PSNI and gardai to prevent more town-centre bombs and possible gun attacks on the security forces by republican dissident groups hell-bent on disrupting the peace process.

The Boucher Road firebomb attacks and other less successful strikes in Belfast city centre last Wednesday were designed to switch the headlines away from a Downing Street visit by the Northern Ireland parties, who were making a pitch for an economic package to rebuild the province’s infrastructure and economic base as they set terms for power sharing and devolution.

In that, the attacks were successful. The news that £3m (€4.5m) in damage had been caused by firebombs got equal billing with British chancellor Gordon Brown’s promise of £50 billion (€74.7 billion) in public spending over the next four years, at least £3 billion of it new money over and above the amount that would have been spent anyway.

It was clearly the intention of the dissident gangs to spread dismay, hijack the news agenda and exercise a veto over the political process. Their success was limited, though, because when all is said and done, what was involved? The Boucher Road blaze was caused by nothing more sophisticated than a domestic firelighter concealed in a video cassette with a timer and small explosive charge to set it alight. The crude device was probably planted by a shopper and timed to go off after dark.

The attack required a minimum of planning and co-ordination. Yet there are only a limited number of people prepared to take the risk.

A number of individuals before the courts are charged with such attacks. If they are found guilty, it will justify the police assertion that dissident republican groups have not gone away. But the dissidents need to recruit and the very small pool of potential members is heavily polluted by informers.

MORALE among dissidents is low and, as Sinn Fein drifts into the political establishment, the remaining IRA terrorists are increasingly desperate to find some way to halt the slide.

Last month a group of 15-20 dissidents, some of them still members of the Provos, met at a house in Dungiven, the South Derry town that is the focus of discontent about Sinn Fein’s peace strategy. The meeting came after a larger gathering planned for Toomebridge had to be abandoned when one delegate, a Real IRA supporter, told The Sunday Times and another newspaper that violence might be on the agenda.

The intention of the series of mini meetings is to reassess the way forward for republicans in the light of the Provisional IRA’s decision to end its war without achieving a united Ireland.

Over tea and biscuits the republicans heard a sobering message from a representative of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). In the recollection of one witness, the former bomber said: “The INLA are not capable of carrying out an effective armed struggle that would get the Brits out. The Real IRA are not capable of that either, and neither are the Continuity IRA. Even if all three amalgamated they still could not remove the British from Ireland.

“This being the case, it is wrong to go down that line of physical force because it leads to an endless cycle of imprisonment, death and destruction with no objective in sight.”

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